


Letting it

by entwinedloop



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Love/Hate, Missing Scenes, Rio's POV, Yearning, bit of gore (2x13 imagery of Rio's injury)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entwinedloop/pseuds/entwinedloop
Summary: The significance of the pearls as Rio reflects on Beth at various points in their non-relationship relationship.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 17
Kudos: 65





	Letting it

**Author's Note:**

> So I was sure, sure that after Beth shot Rio that he’d leave her her pearls. But as vindictive and dramatic as Rio is he always likes to hold on to his mementos. And, importantly, returning the pearls would mean letting go of her, which as season 3 showed us, he has wholly been unable to do. 
> 
> My take at Rio taking stock of the pearls during different stages of his non-relationship with his Elizabeth.
> 
> Dedicated to Hereliesbethboland, whose encouragement spurred me to write again and whose response to the idea of Rio x Beth x pearls made me think yeah I really do want to write about this.

It’s an invitation. A beginning.

When he feels heat coming, he quickly closes an operation and relocates it. Various businesses are always either in the pipes or being executed, and he shouldn’t be relying too much on this one but making funny money can be tied to several of them. Printing money is something he can rely on for now and it’s easy enough to find warehouses in the Detroit area for it. In the long term it won’t last, so he’s working on a back up plan for that, but he knows it’ll take time.

It makes sense to move around, be open one day and vanish even quicker. Gotta keep the police on their toes, the detectives guessing. He’d cleared out this cash printing location earlier than planned because a delivery didn’t come in on time. Two days later he’d be set up again on the westside. Not everyone moved so frequently, making sure not to leave even dust behind. Rio’d seen guys go down for less. He can’t afford to make mistakes, he reminds himself each morning. Not without having that back up plan and a plan for that. Someone’s always going to be trying to come up, competitors may give in to sweet promises by the feds. Someone in his own crew may turn on him.

When he returns early morning to the warehouse he’d cleaned out the evening before, men are walking in in front of him, conversation and gravel echoing off the tall walls. His eyes find the pearls lying quietly on the doorknob to the wide open space. None of the men pick them up though he’s sure a few locked eyes on it. His hands go to it, picking it up with his index finger, the coolness of the gemstones against his palm.

“It ain’t my birthday,” Rio jokes.

“I didn’t get it for you.” Mick jokes back, taking the pearls from Rio, moving to the light.

The men are early, waiting for their associates, and Rio goes over a plan with Bullet for later that day. Focused on the steps, the pearls are little more than a passing question until Mick brings them back. Rio sets them against his teeth.

“They’re real.” Mick says.

“Those are mine,” Devon says, and Rio would say the same if he was in his shoes. They’re decent quality – not top of the line but they definitely catch a luster against the light.

They look like – an image of a woman with a jacket in earth tone colors flashes in front of him and his eyes widen before he meets Mick’s eyes. Mick knows Rio recognizes who they belong to. Rio has absolutely no doubt. None of his workers would’ve left pearls behind. And no one would leave pearls behind in the middle of an empty lot. Any curious eyes would’ve grabbed them, not left them behind to be found.

Rio pockets the pearls and the associates finally arrive. Mostly put aside he sometimes feels the stones against his leg as he’s standing. When he later sits in his car he takes them out, sets them on his hand before placing them on his dash. He sits back, licking his lips. It’s strange, the curious thrill that the sight presses onto him. They were good. She insisted he’s say that. He liked she’d done that. Sure, they were done, he knew that before she’d turned back around and demanded a response. But let her keep guessing, he thought before she'd done it. Let him keep the door open that if he needs something he could always collect. Anyway, he hadn’t even checked the delivery to be certain she fully delivered, though he had a sense that she wouldn’t try to make a fool of him a second time and short him again.

But she insisted. She got his attention. So he gave her what she wanted. So why was he holding the pearls that were sitting on her neck when he saw her last?

There was almost a part of him watching her walk back to her car that thought, that wasn’t awful. The faces of the women with her cleared with relief and he knew then too it was over. She robbed him, but she paid him back. And between that she held it together to read him the riots act with a gun to her head. Not to mention hearing her friend’s shot up an associate’s foot. That was a bonus. Was actually disappointed that it wasn’t her who’d shot him.

How does this work then? Does he use a doorbell, he thought as he parked his car. Naw, he’ll let himself in, once he’s sure she’s alone, once only one light is on. Her kids were young enough they’d be asleep by now, he’d figured when he had started up the car to head back to her house. No choice but drop by. Not like he has her number to call. He’d given her the drop off info when they talked in her back yard and refused to give her a phone number. He could find her number, but what would be the fun in that? He wasn’t keen on waiting, anticipation egging him on to find out what she wanted. He’s not supposed to be at her house, to be talking to her. And he feels that tension from her too, but also a similar anticipation that he senses. Sunlight's gone from the rooms, the intimacy of the evening replacing the bright view of the morning when he’d seen her last in her dining room. He declines a drink and watches her watch him as she sips on hers. She wants something from him.

When she’d offered to do another job, he thought, she’d got one done. Maybe he could try something new. Maybe he could have a little fun with a new kind of associate. Maybe he could benefit from this. Maybe he was curious.

* * *

They're not a party gift but she never asks for them and he has no intention of returning them. They're his now. He uses them, he realizes, as time goes on. Uses the pearls to reflect on what she she does. What she is to him. What she was. It's not constant with her. He's not sure where it's going but he'll take the ride and even though he ends things, even though she betrays him, he finds a way to make things even, it's not over. Not her debt that seems to pile up every other week. That's it. That's gotta be it, she's gotta repay him. The pearls are a piece of her she's left behind that he's adopted as his own but he doesn't think about it. It's like the pearls are laughing at him but he won't listen.

His body is thrumming with exhilaration. He wants her again. Wants to see her, to push against her so she can’t breathe. Hear her whimper and moan against him. Feel her push back, her fingers on him. He wants more. He had a taste and he thought, had thought before that it would be enough. Even if he knows better that. He’d known better than that.

When they were done, after he’d made sure she was but still pressed into her before releasing her, he’d stepped back. The rush was over, flames flooded out, and she stood in front of him. He pulled up his jeans and she finally met his eyes before setting them on the paper towel dispenser. He couldn’t hold back his grin anymore at the cascade of sheets on the floor and she smiled politely, almost stonily, before tearing off a piece. Rio pulled off a piece above it, moving to the faucet and putting his hand under the faucet until the water turned warm. Beth was inching closer, her eyes on the water, wanting him gone, wanting to be gone. Rio wet the paper towel and pushed it towards her. Beth’s head pulled back and her eyes widened as she took it from him, nodding.

“Thank you.”

If she'd have nothing to say, she'd always be polite. He smiled again, something in him too satisfied, and before he could look back the door had unlocked and opened, voices and music rising from outside before they blurred out. Not how he expected this night to go, he thought, as he washed his hands. He'd expected they'd come to this though never, in any variation, would it have come to a wordless invitation, to a bathroom in his bar. He'd not want it another way. He preferred to have her leave first. She initiated this and he followed her lead.

Her husband was sitting in front of her as Rio sauntered past, still smelling Elizabeth on him, the memory of her body as if she'd just rolled away from him. He wished he could laugh in his face, that he could come up behind Elizabeth, pull her head to the side, kiss her neck.

“Can I get one more?” He motions to the bartender as he sits down. She leaves soon after and he watches her husband hold the door for her and them walk down the street. Elizabeth's mouth moves but he can't make out what she says as they head home. She didn't leave nothing behind, not the first time Rio's pocketed a piece of her. He sips on his drink and falls into easy conversation with the woman sitting beside him.

It doesn’t sit well with him. The taste of her sates him but doesn't let him rest long enough. He has no respect for the man Beth shares her life with and he doesn’t like that she leaves with him. He doesn’t like that she leaves. He’d been reeled in by her with a ball of black, warm yarn, and he was still looking for something when she’d disappeared from view. He doesn’t like it.

Unsure what draws him back to it, he slips them out of their hiding place and has them in front of him as he sits at his table, drinking tea with a shot of whiskey. He rolls the stones against the firm surface, back and forth, feeling their hard roundness. Again he thinks his body's sated but it's just curiosity, yeah? How long did it take her to confess, he wonders. Not during their walk or he'd find someone behind him looking for a fight. If he could be here for that, for the realization to hit him, Rio thinks as he sips on his drink. Her husband wouldn't be smart enough to track him down.

The same adrenaline that kicked in when she'd walked away from him at the bar and he knew what she wanted, to standing motionless in front of her, not making a move but not taking a step back, to the thrill at the unspoken permission to touch her like he'd wanted, that same rush coats his veins in bright red now. He's had a quick dinner and he still has some calls to make, meetings to head to. Marcus and him were going to spend the day together tomorrow. He hadn’t seen his son in weeks. He didn’t want to meet with Eric tonight but he didn’t have a choice. The pearls give him clarity, as if having a silent conversation with her. That’s how they tend to work. Small moonstones that usually lie atop of blue lace. His meeting with Eric shouldn’t take too long. So that leaves him time. Sometimes you just gotta act on some things.

Her house’s lights are dark and that’s even better for what he's got planned. He wants to see him too, ready to confront the aftermath of Beth revealing to her husband what she’d done. Ready to see what it’d mean, what it could change. Not that he was ready to jump into anything but something had to come out of this and he’d stay to find out.

True enough, bright lights fill Boland Motors. He’s going to stake a claim. He watches Beth walking out of Dean's office and climbs out of his car. He waits for her to disappear from view, coming closer to the the doors. If she was serious about this she'd have to take serious claim of their inventory, he tsked as he took in the cars lining up the showroom. If that hideous Corvette was the main attraction, one no one he could think of would ever pay a dime for-- but maybe he should take a seat in it, see how it feels first.

It’d be easy enough to lay a claim to the money that was always his, to threaten to get a hand in her business and leave it at that. But he’d always follow that yarn she’d spun without even knowing it, right? That's what the pearls would say if they'd speak, wouldn't they?

* * *

They haunt him. He’s not sure if they’re not a curse.

They usually help clear his mind about what he thinks about her. A compass of reflection on what he actually thinks underneath the mess. They give him clarity. He hasn’t looked at them in so long.

He doesn’t want to look at them. Think about them, after she throws him out. He wants to destroy what he’s left behind, leave glowing coals and watch the orange fade out.

It doesn’t make sense because the way it makes sense is that she’s left him and not looked back. They’re spread out between his fingers, stretched out in front of him as he lies on his back in his bed. Like some stupid teenager. He studies them like they’ll tell him why she did why she did, why she lured him in, kissed him softly like she was kissing someone for the first time, pressed her fingers on his skin, went back and forth between closing her eyes and meeting his, his hands on her body, like every moment she was etching it in her memory. The hardness of the stones, the smoothness the link to her skin. They're always cool when they're first against his palm, his hands, when he puts them on his bare stomach, until his body heat thaws them from the inside out, each time as if discovering warmth for the first time. Like discovering her skin that day. She savored him like he savored her. It wasn’t what he expected because it was more for him. Of something. Then for it to be a twisted ending. Of everything.

The pearls don’t speak back, don’t share a secret of its previous owner. He’d used them to try and have conversations with her. See if they supply a piece of the puzzle. They have to have put a spell on him if he really believes that they’ll help him, that they'll give him any clues. That they'll do anything but draw him back in.

He can’t throw them away. They’re etched into his skin. Hell if it’s over. She’s not walking away when she owes him money, when he’s got his stakes in her business. She’s not answering his calls, it just means he has to up his game. She doesn’t walk away from him.

It doesn’t matter if he understands why, a voice tells him though he tries to ignore it. Doesn’t matter if he understands why she did it. She left something with him and he can’t give it back. Not when it's eaten a piece of him and he can't find it, doesn't want to think about where he's left it.

They make him feel stupid. Stupid he’d made a mistake, they taunt him. So much cacophony from silence. They don't let him let go of her and they don't feel like her either. But when he's rolling them against his skin, he still imagines them against hers. Had she owned them that long that if he breaks one apart he'll learn something about her? He puts them away before he gives in to the urge of pulling the necklace so it rips, leaving a cascade of pearls crash to the floor. It's not over. It may just take their lifetime for it to be over.

* * *

He imagines it during the day. At night. It has to be him. She has to see it coming. She didn’t give him that decency but she did shoot him face to face. He’ll give her the same dignified ending. He has to look her in the eye when he does it. He can’t regret it. He'll stay with her until it's over. He's not as cruel as her.

Before he gets holed up in the hotel room he has the option of getting some effects. Nothing major. Turner knows everything that’s coming in but that’s not the reason he won’t take them with him. He doesn’t need them. They represent an end now.

So, no, he doesn’t need to have them. His eyes close and he thinks of his son. He misses him. Marcus can’t know where he is. Can’t ever see his dad is hurt. Not hearing Marcus’s voice, his laughter, is getting to him. He’s got to stay away from him but when he’s injured it hurts more. When Rio can imagine the unacceptable reality of his son growing up with a father. He plays a message his son left him for his birthday the year before when voices get too loud in his end.

He misses his home. He misses his freedom. It’ll come back. He should be grateful, should be grateful. He’s spent months away from his son, from his family, the people he trusts with his life, and his fingers are itching to get back. That’s always been the same. Turner does his work and each name Rio gives him, every clue, builds another wall around the man who saved his life. Rio had to say yes. When blood colored the screen in front of him and liquid splattered into the air he was going to make any promise he had to make a call so he could keep breathing. No reasonable man was going to lose his life. But that doesn’t mean he was going to completely turn over. If he could help himself along the way, he’d do it.

When he walks out into the sun with his bag over his shoulder, he can see gemstones in the clouds. They show him one way. First he'll see his son. He'll make sure he make a presence, talk with his main guys. And then it’s to close the last thread he’s got left from that his life. He's reinvented himself over and over. He doesn’t have a choice and he can’t hesitate. He can’t abide to keep a weakness. Not anymore.

Then he can bury them. Then it can be over. He couldn’t have any more mementos of her. Once she’s gone they’d be gone too.

They used to ground him, the white gemstones. Give him a reality check, give him clarity to how he feels, to what he needs to do. Point him where he needs to go. Maybe that’s why he can’t look at them now. He’s got clarity, he’s got the only answer he needs to end this and move on. He can’t hesitate. If someone tried to take your life you had to take theirs. You had to get rid of the threat. No one could find out someone tried to take him out and he didn't take care of it. Even if wasn't just that. She was a weakness he had to eliminate. Or she'd always haunt him. But even without it, this was the only way. 

If he had the pearls in his hands he’d be tempted to destroy them and that won’t work. It would give him a sense of peace he needs. Only one thing will do to truly give him that in the long run. Tit for tat.

Perhaps it wasn’t clarity that they give at all, when they’d deceived him before. Only ending needs to be reflected back from now. He’ll find them when he’s done it. When he can move on. Only then.

* * *

He can’t look at her as he offers her to join him in the hot tub. Like he’s not ready to fully commit to it. Not ready. They’re not ready for it. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean it. It’s not like he keeps his eyes off her for long as he turns his gaze back, trying to read her response. Beth’s not meeting his eyes as she coolly offers that some salesman read over the features with him. Like he can’t read it off himself off the instruction book these dirty bathtubs come with. Of course she would do that over agree to climb into one with him. That’s OK. They’re not ready for it.

He already envisions it, branches reaching out, connecting with what he’s already got, the hot tub business standing independently just in case he has to move his focus to a new operation. New possibilities. More than that, an expansion. New markets. The bottom line is always in front of him but he takes pleasure in the process. Seeing an operation pick up from the ground. She’s smart. She’s always been smart. That’s never been a problem.

The door shuts behind him, his last words to her still clouding his thoughts. Nothing would pull him back to that showroom but time. Monitoring the next steps, picking up the cash. Back to an old routine and he still couldn’t believe himself. He’d have to make sure Mick was free. Rio knew what he was doing coming here alone. He just needed – just needs to check on some things when it comes to her. It didn’t help though. Didn’t help when he couldn’t do what he needed to do. That he realized he couldn’t do.

It was madness. You make a miscalculation and you can pay with your life. He thought he could control her and he couldn’t bank on that again. Three shots didn’t get him this time. It didn’t mean he was safe. Didn’t mean that he was safe with her in his life. It didn’t make sense and he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. Even if he was just thinking business with her it never kept him on steady ground. Cause that wasn’t enough.

She'd been in his apartment, stood so close to what she'd left behind her, but didn't touch it. He didn't take them out after she had left then, her presence being too much. As much as he wanted her to stay it was her turn to leave. His turn to order her to get out. It's never been this hard to end something before and he couldn't didn't want to understand it.

He’ll never forgive her for what she did and his heart hardens as he crushes any second thoughts. But maybe he’s ready to entertain the thought of airing it out without his gun.

They’ll never go back to what they used to be and he breathes in the cool air wanting it to sting his chest but it doesn’t. But maybe--

He needs to find the pearls.


End file.
